DBAN Stuck on PCI (sysfs)

On older Lenovo laptops (T500, X200, etc.) DBAN often gets stuck at PCI (sysfs). I’m sure this happens on other machines, but I’ve only encountered it on Lenovo laptops. I’ll detail how to get past this with Lenovo, but if you’ve seen this issue on other machines let me know and I’ll add that information here. For the record, I’m using DBAN 2.2.6 (beta).

Access the BIOS (F1 at the ThinkPad screen)

Go to Security > I/O Port Access

Change “Memory Card Slot” to Disabled

Press F10 and select Yes to save changes and exit

When you run DBAN again it should fly through without further incident.

DBAN is a useful tool for destroying data on hard disks. You can find more information about it at http://www.dban.org/. I was going to add a useless diatribe here about DBAN 2.2.7 and on, but there really isn’t any benefit in doing that. I recommend you use 2.2.6. It works well on most machines (1.0.7 works better on really old machines).